


Companions

by viklikesfic (v_angelique)



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-08
Updated: 2007-02-08
Packaged: 2017-10-04 13:16:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/v_angelique/pseuds/viklikesfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story of bread, in three parts.  Written for the <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/14valentines/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://community.livejournal.com/14valentines/"><b>14valentines</b></a> hunger challenge.  Please help fight world hunger by going to <a href="http://www.wfp.org/how_to_help/support_wfp/individuals.asp?section=4&sub_section=1">the UN World Food Programme</a> and donating.  You can target your donation to a particular area of interest or just send a donation to whatever region needs it most.  This is an issue very near and dear to my heart, so consider sending $5 or $10 if you can.  Every little bit helps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Companions

_Let us break bread together on our knees,  
Let us break bread together on our knees.  
When I fall to my knees with my face to the rising sun,  
O Lord have mercy on me.  
\--Afro-American spiritual, author unknown_

**I. **

It didn't take Viggo long to realise that he was different from the other Danish kids. Sure, he had a Danish name, and his father's family were all Danish. They came from respectable little villages around Jutland and other parts of the country, names like Skagen and Sønderho that gave you a certain amount of street cred in Århus primary school. But Viggo's mother was not Danish, in fact, she was about as far from Danish as you could be, and Viggo, though he didn't remember any of the first two years of his life there, was from _New York_. New York was not respectable. New York was where you went when you gave up, or when you sold out.

The children noticed Viggo's mother from the get go, noticed her classic all-American beauty good looks and her funny accent. She spoke some Danish, but she wasn't fluent. When he was five, Viggo begged her to stop speaking English to him when she picked him up from school. _Just try, Mom. I know you can._

As he got older, his mother's fluency improved, but it didn't matter. At seven, Viggo was already a marked man.

Of course, it wasn't only the linguistic and cultural differences that sat him apart. Viggo was a smart kid, a precocious kid, but he was quiet, and he was smart in different ways. When called on, he always knew the answer, but he never raised his hand. He liked to sit in the art corner and play with the watercolours. When he was eight, one of his paintings of a sunset went up in the school's front lobby. When he was nine, he met Hans.

Hans was one of three Hanses in Viggo's class, just like Viggo was one of three Viggos. But Hans, too, was different. Hans, like Viggo, was quiet. He had transferred from a country school, and he was a little behind in his reading, much further behind in his math. He sat in the corner, and he was a little scruffy looking. His uniform looked like it needed a good pass-over with an iron, and there was usually dirt under his fingernails. He kept his hair a little longer than the other boys, and it sometimes had tangles in it. He was smaller than most children his age, and skinny enough that you could see his ribs if his shirt rode up. In Hans, Viggo found a kindred spirit.

"Jeg har dig et rundstykke bragt."

Viggo rarely spoke to other children voluntarily. Cautiously, Hans glanced around to see that no one was looking and then met him halfway.

"Tak."

Viggo tore the golden roll, no longer warm but still soft on the inside, with his bare hands. They ate together in silence, and then sat side by side, their backs to the warm brick of the schoolhouse, scuffing the dirt with the toes of their shoes. Viggo's father baked bread, which was unusual with so many bakeries in the neighbourhood, but the bread was good, yeasty and slightly sweet. Every afternoon after that, Viggo brought something for both children, and they shared the bread together at playtime, every afternoon moving a little further away from the squeals and shouts of the other children. One afternoon a few weeks later, they found themselves around the corner entirely, the parking lot behind the school almost empty, eating the last crusts of a slice of dry brown bread.

"My brother is in high school," Hans said, idly, his voice a bit hoarse from disuse. Viggo turned, cocked his head to the side with interest but didn't reply, his toe scuffing a bit closer. "He's fourteen. He has a girlfriend."

Viggo wrinkled his nose. "I don't like girls."

Hans smiled. "Me neither."

The next day, they ended up on the far end of the school building again. A storm was building in the distance, the clouds hanging dark and low, the sky almost green. Viggo sighed and shivered, and Hans put one hand on Viggo's shoulder.

"It's okay to be afraid," he whispered. Viggo turned to him, surprised, and Hans tilted his head and pushed his chapped, slightly sticky lips against Viggo's. Viggo recoiled slightly at first, and then opened his eyes, giving Hans a questioning look. "That's what Petr does with his girlfriend sometimes, when they don't see me looking. Do you like it?"

Viggo thought for a minute, and then he nodded. "Yeah."

Hans smiled, and did it again.

After a week, Viggo and Hans decided that they had mastered the art of kissing. It was a hot day now, and sticky, the air hanging with the reminder of storms. Without speaking, after their snack, Hans reached down and undid the button of his trousers. He pulled his penis out, small and limp, and turned to Viggo.

"Can I see yours?"

Viggo shrugged, and unbuttoned his own fly. He wasn't sure why his hands were trembling.

"Yours is bigger," Hans observed helpfully, and Viggo nodded. He cautiously turned his head, laid it on Hans' shoulder, and his penis grew slightly.

"I think it likes me," Hans added, and giggled, and Viggo started laughing, couldn't stop. He buried his head in Hans' neck, embarrassed, but his penis didn't stop growing, and it felt warm and heavy between his legs. He reached down with one hand and stroked it, gently, pressing a kiss to the dirty skin of Hans' neck.

"Do you like to touch it?" Hans asked, and Viggo nodded.

"Me, too. I like to touch mine. Can I touch yours?"

Viggo nodded again. Hans reached out, and his hand felt cracked and a little gritty around the small (but still growing) shaft. Viggo bit his lip when he groaned, and Hans reached out with his other hand and pinched the corner of Viggo's lip between his fingers, gently tugged it away from Viggo's teeth.

"It's okay to make noises. If it feels good."

Viggo nodded, and this time he let a slight, breathy moan rumble in his chest when Hans stroked him. He turned his head, and laced his fingers through Hans' hair, and pressed their lips together. Hans tasted like bread and bubble gum, and he pushed harder into the small, dirty hand. The whistle rang out, muted, from the playground at the other side of the building. Viggo frowned, and Hans pulled away.

"Next time," he whispered, a beautiful promise.

 

The next day, Hans didn't come to school. Nor the day after that. Viggo snooped around, quietly, in his own way, and found out some things. Hans' family didn't have very much money, that much he realised. He hadn't realised that the bread he brought the boy, hastily gobbled up, was often the only thing Hans had to eat in a day. He hadn't realised that Hans' father drank gin, rather than baking bread. He hadn't realised that Hans' mother, desperate, had slept with another man in the family's small, rickety house, and that the children had sometimes been able to hear her groans. But he found it all out, from blending into the background and listening carefully to adults.

A tragedy, they said. Five children, all orphaned. The father had found out, took out the shotgun, killed the wife and the lover and then himself. Tragic.

The children were relocated to a centre in Copenhagen, and Viggo never saw Hans again.

 

**II.**

Viggo finished school early, when he was sixteen. He was very bright, and a brilliant artist. He went to art school in Copenhagen, but when he finished he was nineteen and a wonderful painter but also a man with no employable skills. He worked odd jobs for a year, and then, when he was twenty, he saw an advert for culinary school in London. There were three tracks available, two years each. Viggo decided that he would become a pastry chef.

London didn't suit Viggo, really. It was loud and chaotic and his flat was very small. It was hard to concentrate, and he stopped painting after a while. But he liked his classes, and he liked the other students, coming to London from all over the world to learn the art of cuisine.

In the first year, Viggo found his way into the beds of many of his classmates. There was Louis from Bordeaux, and Alistair from Canterbury. Peter, who was either from Munich or Vienna—his story kept changing—was kicked out of school at the end of the first year for stealing chocolate; turned out he was a kleptomaniac. Viggo learned how to be a pleasing lover, and how not to expect too much. By the second year, he was seeing Jason pretty much exclusively, and he was okay with that. He still kept expectations low.

"What do you have first period? Oh, fuck. Advanced cake decorating. That's shit, mate, sorry."

Viggo smiled weakly over his timetable, and Jason grinned through falling locks of brown hair; kissed Viggo impulsively. Jason was a bit of a brat—arrogant and wealthy—but he was also passionate, and attractive, and good in bed. His father was a London banker, and as long as Jason kept his mouth shut about his sexuality and didn't throw his family's name around too liberally, he got a fat allowance deposited every semester and a new car to drive. He took Viggo with him on holidays to Brighton and the Lake District and other locales where they stayed in posh, secluded timeshares and never interacted with the locals.

Throughout the first year of school, Viggo had always wondered where all their creations, the slightly botched cakes and slightly burned croissants, as well as the more edible dishes, all lined up on metal shelves, went to. Perhaps they were sold somewhere, he wasn't really sure, but such a massive amount of food was produced, and most students only took things home occasionally—only so many sweets and bread products a person can stand, after all.

Then, one evening early in the second year, Jason was staying late for a class and Viggo was leaving the building through the back way to walk home alone when he saw them. Women and men, some old or middle aged, even a few children, digging in the huge dumpsters behind the school. One teenaged boy, dressed in a beat up leather jacket and a t-shirt so faded and threadbare that its original colour was undetectable, grinned as he walked away with his prize, a raspberry cheesecake almost entirely intact on its little corrugated cardboard circle, just a couple scraps of lettuce hanging from one side. Viggo recognised that cake. He had made it an hour ago.

 

The next night, Viggo told Jason to wait for him at the bar, that he had something to do first. And when a member of the janitorial staff came to clear the metal shelves, he shook his head with a smile at the young Moroccan woman and told her in French to go on home, that he would take care of it. It took half an hour to get all the food packed neatly in boxes and brought out to the back entrance, but the smiles and looks of gratitude were worth it.

They were cautious at first, but once the homeless men and women realised that Viggo wasn't going to turn them in or take their food away, they came eagerly to take the leftovers, plenty for everyone now that none of the food was contaminated by falling to the bottom of the dumpster. A few older women even hugged him, and Viggo blushed heavily before hurrying to the bar.

Jason laughed when he found out, the next week, what Viggo was up to after school. He said Viggo should just donate to UNICEF, even offered some of his own money if he'd do it, but Viggo shook his head and smiled and said he couldn't let all that food go to waste.

After a few weeks, Viggo started to notice a certain man hanging back, apart from the rest. He wasn't as obviously homeless; didn't carry a large sack of belongings like most of the men and women that came for the food. And he didn't jump in with the rest of them, just stood back watching—proud. His clothes weren't expensive, but they were clean, aside from the beat up leather jacket and the backpack slung over his shoulder. He looked to be about Viggo's age, maybe a bit older. Viggo knew somehow, instinctively, that the man wasn't born this way. He hadn't been down on his luck for long. He looked at the boxes of gourmet pastries and cakes that the others carried away to their cardboard boxes and park benches, watched with a look of longing and hunger, but he never approached Viggo. Never begged.

Jason was a good man at heart, but he began to grow tired of Viggo's insistence on staying after school every day for his "little charity crusade," as Jason termed it. He went to the bar every night and was already drunk when Viggo arrived. Viggo was pretty sure Jason was cheating on him with a pretty yet brainless Norwegian boy. Surprisingly, he found he didn't really care.

Viggo kept giving away food, and for six days he watched the striking young man in the shadows, who in turn watched the others like a vulture sighting out its prey, but never actually took any food of his own. On the seventh day, Viggo came up with a plan. Every time Viggo tried to look at the stranger, he had looked away or even turned and left, but he kept coming back. Viggo didn't doubt that the man wanted the food, but he suspected that he was too proud to accept it.

So, on this evening, a Monday, Viggo brought the towering creations of pastry and cake to the little crowd of patiently waiting men and women, and then hurried back inside. When he emerged again, he was carrying a simple loaf of brioche in a box, with a bit of ham and Swiss he had pilfered from the cuisine track's classroom.

At first, Viggo thought the man was going to bolt as he approached him with long, confident strides, but he seemed almost too surprised to move, eyeing Viggo with uncertainty.

"Hi," Viggo greeted him softly, with a smile, his hair falling in front of his eyes. "I baked something for you. I thought you might like it, if you like ham. If not I won't be offended," he added quickly, careful to phrase his offer as if the man had a choice, not as if he were offering a handout.

"I… for me?" the man asked, looking surprised.

"Yeah," Viggo agreed with a grin. "You looked like a ham and cheese kind of a guy. I thought maybe we could share some, have a little picnic supper?"

The man frowned and tilted his head. "Don't you have somewhere to be, mate?"

"Nah," Viggo replied, still smiling but this time with a bit of a blush. "I mean, I can go meet my boyfriend if you'd rather I just leave it, but I've been intrigued… wondered if you might like to talk to me."

"Intrigued?" the man asked, pointing to his chest. "By me?"

"Sure," Viggo agreed with a smile. "You're always around on this corner. Kind of mysterious. I thought you looked like an interesting guy."

The man laughed, bitterly, and shook his head. "Always on the same corner, mate, could just be a street whore."

Viggo laughed back, but stood his ground. "You're not a whore. Too butch."

The man just stared at Viggo, incredulous, and he took the opportunity to hold up the box again. "So… dinner?"

The man shrugged, and jammed his hands in his pockets, and Viggo grinned, leading the way to the park.

"I'm Viggo," he offered as they walked. "Mortensen."

"Sean Bean," the man replied, reaching across his body to offer a hand. Sean's grip was firm, and Viggo noticed that his hands, though not quite clean, were strong and calloused.

"You from around here, Sean?"

"London? No. From Sheffield. South Yorkshire," Sean clarified, and Viggo nodded. "You're American?"

Viggo laughed and shook his head. "My mother is, but I haven't lived there since I was two. I grew up in Denmark."

"Really? English is your second language?" Sean asked, sounding surprised.

"I learned both at the same time," Viggo clarified. "Bilingual. Speak a bit of French and Spanish, too. Some Norwegian…"

"Christ. Talented."

Viggo smiled and shrugged. "In some ways. What about you?"

Sean gave Viggo a sidelong look, a bit suspicious. "What about me?"

"What's your story?" Viggo pressed.

"Thought you could've guessed that," Sean replied bitterly, and Viggo frowned.

"If I had to guess, I'd say a bit down on your luck. Got kicked out of the house, maybe? Haven't found a job yet?"

Sean smiled, with an expression surprisingly warm. "Not far off the mark, mate. I worked for a while, though. Left school when I was fifteen. Only been in London for a few months, and it's… a bit difficult. Wasn't kicked out, though. Chose to leave."

Viggo nodded. "Where are you staying?"

Sean shrugged. "Nowhere, really. Anywhere I can catch a wink."

Viggo nodded again, bit his lip, considered offering but Jason…

"How old are you, then? Seem a bit older than the other aspiring chefs."

Viggo grinned and shrugged. "A bit. I'm twenty-one. A spring chicken, I know."

Sean laughed and shook his head. "I'm twenty."

"Really?"

"Aye." He shrugged. "Hard labour tends to add the years on quicker."

Viggo nodded. "Here. Sit with me. Have some bread."

Sean smiled, and agreed.

 

**III.**

After culinary school, Viggo stayed in London for a while apprenticing, then went back to Denmark to make desserts in a fancy restaurant in Copenhagen. When he was thirty-five, he met a man and fell in love. He picked up a paintbrush for the first time in years, and sold some things. He quit his job, and lived with his boyfriend for five years, until they finally went their separate ways. When he was forty, he returned to England, and opened his own bakery in York. When he was forty-eight, he found Sean again.

Viggo almost didn't recognise him. It was late afternoon, and he was getting ready to close in an hour. There were a few loaves of bread left that hadn't sold, some croissants. After work he would box up the bread and take it to the local shelter, as he had been doing since he opened the place. When he heard the chime over the door, he sighed at first, and then he looked up and into familiar green eyes and an incredulous expression he hadn't forgotten despite nearly thirty years of elapsed time.

"Sean?"

"Viggo Mortensen… I don't bloody believe it."

After that night in the park, there had been a week of such nights. Then, Viggo became busy with pastillage, and blown sugar fruits weren't exactly a nutritious meal for a homeless man. Jason didn't like him hanging around the back alley, and after a few more days, Sean disappeared. He'd wondered, since that night, what had happened to the striking young man from Sheffield who looked older than his years. He'd done two sketches, one in pen-and-ink and one in charcoal, of Sean. Both sat under his bed for years, but always moved with him. He wasn't sure why, but Viggo remembered people, and Sean stuck with him more than most.

"Please," Viggo insisted, coming out from behind the counter and gripping Sean by both arms before the man could protest, a smile coming to his lips. "Sit down. God. I don't believe it's you."

Sean moved slowly to one of the small tables as Viggo hurried to the front and flipped the Open/Closed sign, and then ran behind the counter again and started cursing at the espresso machine.

"Just a sec, I'll have us some coffee… sorry, this bloody thing's so temperamental…"

Sean grinned and waved at Viggo not to worry about it, watching as the older man finally got the machine to work and produced a couple of lattes in unique green-and-brown pottery mugs.

"These are lovely," Sean commented, turning the mug in his hand to admire the glazework.

"Oh, I um… I made them myself. Thought it'd be a nice touch," Viggo explained, blushing as he produced some plates. "What can I get you to eat? Pain au chocolate? Apple tart?"

"Have any brioche?" Sean asked, an impish grin lighting his features, and Viggo's face instantly brightened.

"As a matter of fact, I do."

They sat in silence for a minute, nibbling on brioche and drinking coffee, until Viggo began babbling nervously.

"You know, bread is one of the oldest forms of prepared foods. Dates back to the Palaeolithic area; they think they used to make it with water and some sort of a grain paste. But leavened bread didn't exist until the Egyptians."

"Yeah?" Sean said with an amused smile. "And how did they figure that out?" he asked, almost gently.

"Oh, well there's a good story to go with that," Viggo replied, encouraged. "See, the legend is that in the 12th century before Christ, a slave in some royal Egyptian household was making bread for the house. But he got distracted, see, chatting with his friends or whatever, and he forgot about the dough that he had made. Well he comes back and it's doubled to twice its size!"

Sean smiled and took a sip of coffee. "So then what did he do?"

"Well he tried to cover up his error, by punching down the dough as hard as he could, and then baking it. Turned out the bread was the softest anyone had ever tasted."

"Lucky bastard," Sean muttered, and Viggo grinned.

"Gives some hope to the bullshitters of the world."

Sean grinned. "Amen to that."

"So what are you doing in York, Sean?" Viggo asked, tearing off bits of bread idly to give his hands something to do.

"Well, I didn't want to go back to Sheffield. Found work in London for a while, but it was expensive. Ended up finding a job up here, welding. It's hard work, and I don't know how much longer I'll manage it, but they've given me some responsibility; have some men under me now."

"Well that's great!"

Sean smiled and shrugged. "Better than bumming around, at least." He was silent for a moment, warming his hands around the mug, and then he looked up with a soft smile. "Tell me more about bread, Viggo."

"All right," Viggo agreed with a smile of his own. "Let's see… well after the Egyptians started leavening bread, you know, everyone did it. The first public bakeries sprung up in ancient Greece and again in Rome. White bread became known as a rich man's food, but eventually anyone could get brown bread. They used to just use airborne yeast to make it rise, but then the Gauls and the Iberians figured out that if they skimmed the foam off of their beer and added it to the dough, it would rise quicker."

Sean laughed heartily at that. "Sounds like a case of spill and don't tell to me."

Viggo grinned. "Probably so. In any event, they did that, and other cultures that drank more wine got the idea to make a paste from grape juice and flour and let it ferment. And of course, all different sorts of bread rose up throughout Western culture, and even some in the east, like Indian naan or Pakastani chapatti. But no one got the idea to slice bread until the twenties, and it wasn't a common practice until 1928."

"Who came up with that?"

"Some American, not sure."

"Where'd you learn so much about bread, then? Culinary school?"

"A bit. I like to read," Viggo replied with a sheepish grin. "Bread's so fascinating to me. I mean, it has significance in almost every major religion, in Christianity even representing Christ's body. Culturally, it has a strong tie-in with wealth and prosperity. Think of all the major social movements and how important bread was—"Peace, Land, and Bread" wasn't a new thing in 1912, trust me. Even in the middle ages, when they used to use a round piece of flat bread called a trencher, before developing the wooden plate in the 15th century, people would give the trenchers away to the poor when they finished."

"So you're following tradition, like."

"A little yeah," Viggo agreed. "I wasn't trying to be some sort of hero, though, I mean… it just always disgusted me that we could make so much food and throw it away. I had a friend, when I was little, in Denmark… I didn't realise it at the time, but he was quite poor. We got to be friends when I started sharing my father's homemade bread with him."

"Brings people together, doesn't it?"

Viggo smiled as he raised his mug to his lips, a strand of hair falling in his eyes. "Yes."

For a moment, they ate in silence, until Viggo looked up again and smiled. "Did you know that the word 'companion' literally means 'one with whom bread is broken?'"

Sean smiled and shook his head. "Didn't know that." He paused a moment, finishing his cup, and then fixed Viggo with a serious look. "You're a good companion, then."

Viggo blushed and smiled. "Because I share bread with you?"

"No," Sean disagreed. "Because I like sharing bread with you."

"Oh," Viggo said softly. "Can I… get you anything else?"

Sean nodded, and Viggo stood from his chair, turning toward the counter, but Sean grabbed him by the arm to stop him, his grip firm but not painful, and tugged down slightly so that Viggo had no choice but to bend over.

"No more bread," he said in a gruff whisper, and Viggo's eyes were just as incredulous as Sean's had been that first time, right up until Sean pressed their lips together softly and let his hand drift to Viggo's lower back. Then Viggo decided to stop thinking so hard.

"How did you…" Viggo whispered, when he'd finally pulled away, and lacking a nearby chair, sank gracefully to his knees, one hand on Sean's denim-clad thigh.

Sean smiled. "In London. You said you had a boyfriend?"

"Oh, right." Viggo blushed.

"Do you have one now?"

Viggo smiled and shook his head. "No. You?"

"No."

"Good."

Sean grinned. "So, erm… what are you doing with the rest of your life?"

Viggo burst out laughing, his forehead dropping to Sean's thigh, next his hand. The denim was warm and the muscle underneath it, firm.

"Don't have any plans," he finally replied with a sheepish smile.

Sean grinned and laced his fingers in Viggo's hair. "Good. Because I've a few in mind."


End file.
